MH-201 Boom Bip & Doseone - CircleA Birdcatcher in a no-piece suit and a Town Crier in the round, Circle is the critically acclaimed full-length from vocalist Doseone and producer Boom Bip. The New York Times has named Circle one of the "Top-Ten Worthwhile Albums of the Year" and the duo have been rewarded with over a dozen artist profiles including a feature in The Wire and nods to Doseone as Spin's "Incoming" and CMJ's "On the Verge" artist-of-the-month. A cohesive work of word and sound that ends where it begins and emulates the child within, Circle combines honest word and live instrumentation with an amalgam of sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties compositions. Doseone does it all, prose at light speed, in slow speak, and even bird calls. Circle is at once like everything and nothing before it - and what comes next will not be the same.

Tracklist

01. Open

02. The Birdcatcher

03. Square

04. Dead Man's Teal

05. Re: The Rarity Of Meaningful Experience

06. Directions To California

07. The Lantern

08. "Art Saved My Life" - 71

09. Questions Over Coffee

10. Wishful Thinking

11. Ironish

12. 21 To 35

13. Slight

14. "Open Quotes

15. Town Crier's Walk

16. Fence Hopping

17. Poetic License

18. Viewfinder

19. The Birdcatcher's Return

20. Sleep Talkin

21. Gin

22. Goddamn Telephone

23. I Get It

24. Me And People

25. Ho's

26. Square... No Corners

27. This Album Was Meant To Be Myself But Somewhere Along The Line It Ended Up Feeling More Like You... Yet...

28. The Birdcatcher's Oath

29. Close

Release Details

Release Date: 08/01/2000

Running Time: 65:00

2XLP/Out Of Print

CD/Out Of Print

LOSSLESS/Out Of Print

Territory: World Excluding UK/Europe

License For UK/Europe: The Leaf Label - Release Date: 05/27/2002

Reviews Summary

A masterpiece, fladdout - Your Flesh / Let them take your inner ear outer there. - NME / Invigorating, wildly innovative and inventive - Play Louder / Ambitious, off the wall, and impossible to justice in a review - Straight No Chaser / A landmark moment in hip-hop history - Exclaim! / This might be the best... document to have emerged from hip-hop's savant-garde - The Wire

A masterpiece, fladdout. A whole album full of sweet disarray as a hip-hop record. This thing colors so far outside the lines that the kindergarten schoolmarm starts wailing and you're not in 2D anymore. Boom Bip weaves beat and ambient textures out of just about anything and Doseone flows bugs bunny inflected over and beyond into drop outs filled with syncopated lyrical spew sprints functioning as Captain Beefy going on about cherry phosphates. Both the sound and the lyrics are surreal yet transparent, demonstrating the rare hip-hop quality of being completely oblivious of the need to be anything other tan itself. It's the range of what they are that's so amazing. A Dj Shadow-flavored jackhammer kick drum gets overlaid with a snarling rainbow viper guitar and human vox approximating vocode precision. Voices jabber in different headphones cinema-o'-the-ear style, turning the clock back to childhood. You beneath your backwoods dad's lecture, in the cradle, old phones ringing; battle rolling snares underpinning casual spiraling yet purposefully swooping emcee flow. Beats drop out as much as in, and Doseone transforms to dream diary spoken-word chant poet on a dime. Layers of conscious and subconscious thoughts flirt with the periphery and occasionally push one of themselves forward, but none of this closes in or disorients. It all smacks of the organic sensory nature of life itself, earthy and cyclical; chirpy outdoor birdsongs and all. The first few listens may leave you dizzy, 'cuz neither Boom Bip nor Doseone are afraid to go in over their heads or yours to make a point. Repeated listens reveal chaos theory and fractal interpolations deep into the head of a true poet, one who knows exactly where he is. The kind of novel to read over and over. - Your Flesh